Back Translation and Reconciliation- What, How and Why

The primary motto of back translation and reconciliation is to check the correctness of an article. Here, we will discuss in detail what they are and how they affect an article. Also, we will find out why are they necessary. Moreover, these services provide you additional quality and surety of accuracy for most sensitive translations. They become more important if you deal with valuable content and want to translate it in multiple languages while conveying the actual message.

What is Back Translation?

It is the translation of a target document to its original or source language. This will help you determine the quality and accuracy of the translated text with respect to the original text. Thus, it helps to establish the same meaning between the original and translated text.

How to do a quality Back Translation?

Let us take an example (Refer, Figure 1.). So, you have a set of documents to translate from French to Swedish. A Skilled translator has completed this translation. Now another translator will translate the translated version (Swedish) to the original French version. There is one important point to note. The translator must remain unaware of the original French document while executing the translation (Swedish to French). Only then you will be able to establish the fidelity of the translated document.

Figure 1. Example

Figure 1. Example

Do not hope that you will get an exact word to word translation of the original document. What we need to keep here is the coherent meaning of the original document. You can detect confusions, ambiguity if any, in the translation itself.

The final document is compared to the original document after translation to omit any inconsistencies and translation errors. However, it is not necessary that the final document must be 100% similar to the original one.

The main motto behind the translation is to form a document that is as close as possible to the original one. Also, it serves as a proofreading tool that helps to pick out the following errors:

  • Inaccurate Terminology
  • Grammatical discrepancies
  • Cultural Opacity

In the case of a medical document, Back Translation is an invaluable tool to spot any improper use of terminology that may cause serious problems. Similarly, a small grammatical error or cultural ambiguity may affect customer understanding and lead to the failure of communication with people.

To prepare a Reconciliation Report, you must trace and highlight the differences after comparing the two translations. However, you must consult an original translator and a project manager to ensure the optimization of the final translation report before sending it to the client.

Also read: Important Points to consider while doing translation of Patents

Patent Translation Techniques

Why is Back Translation important?

They are extremely important when you are working on sensitive content. It can also be a content that has risky information. The translated document must have a similar meaning as that of the original one. This is because in many cases the translator misunderstands or misinterprets the meaning. Also, the translator can miss or overlook a complexity. As a result, the final translation might contain some meaning different from that of the original text. Keeping all these issues in mind back translation is necessary to keep the concept accurate. Hence, the translation must be culturally suitable for the target audience.

What is Translation Reconciliation?

What is the meaning of reconciliation? It means bringing back friendly relations. It also means to make someone or something compatible with others. So what is translation reconciliation? It is the minor changes or amendments on the translated document to make it conceptually similar to the original document.

How to do reconciliation?

A subject matter expert team will conduct the job. They will find out the equivalence of meaning between the translated and the back-translated original document. At this point in time, changes are already made to the translated document.

What are the results of back translation and reconciliation?

Both the above-discussed processes yield assured quality results. It should be true for documents carrying a significant message. The meaning delivered in a language should be similar to the original document. There can be instances where a translator misinterprets or overlooks a particular term. Therefore, even a minor mistake may totally change the meaning of a document.

Also read: How to Conduct Patent Search: A Quick Guide

What is the Importance of Patent Proofreading

The Patent Translation Express Assistance

Our dedicated and skilled team at the Patent Translations Express work diligently to give you the best results. We own a team of native experts of the languages and provide you the most accurate translations. You just need to provide the input data in the form of txt, pdf, jpg, gif or any other format. We will update you with received confirmation and you can check the work progress any time. Moreover, we provide you the translated document within 1-4 working days and you can download the result online. To get to know more about our services, do visit Patent Translation Express.

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